


Mindful Matters

by blythechild



Category: V for Vendetta (2005)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:46:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate view of the 5 days leading up to November 5th. This is a relationship-heavy story. It's hard to say more without spoilers...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Return

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first piece of fanfiction that I wrote, ever. I think that I must have been nuts to start with something this weighty... I haven't read it in years - let alone edited it - so take from that what you will. The explicit rating applies to the fic as a whole, not individual chapters.
> 
> This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over any characters herein. It was created as a personal entertainment. This story contains mature themes and graphic sexual content. It should not be read by minors.

V sat at his kitchen table and wondered idly what he should do next. It was October 31st and his preparations were complete; nothing to do but check, re-check, and wait for his moment. Evey had been gone for over 2 months and he had no hope of seeing her again. At least, if she were there, he’d have someone to talk to. He unconsciously let a wistful sigh escape him and tried not to notice that his guts still churned at the loss of her. He had wronged her but he had freed her, and he wished that he could have better expressed that in “freeing” her, he had tried to show her his love. It was twisted, but what did one expect from a mangled, psychologically damaged terrorist?

He fingered the saucer of his teacup casually, soaking up the radiant heat of the tea within. His mind leapt from one random synaptic suggestion to another without significance or linear connection; like a frog bouncing from one lily pad on a pond to another. Suddenly, he recalled the smell of rosehips on warmed skin and rain-washed alleyways, and she was there.

“I don’t suppose that there’s another cup’s worth left in the pot?” She stood within the main gallery just at the edge of the light’s reach from the kitchen. V had taken to leaving lights on only when absolutely necessary now that he was living the bachelor life again, creating a permanent atmosphere of gloom. The light created only a faint outline of her form. She was dressed in a simple skirt and a v-necked blouse that he suspected that he might have given her. Her hair had grown in a bit in soft, short curls and her body had filled and rounded out again as it was when they had first met.

His head jerked upwards at the sound of her voice but his body remained frozen. He hadn’t heard her enter and in the twilight, he was wondering whether he was imagining this. She stepped into the light, as if she read his hesitation. She was real, and really there. He could smell her from across the room; that dizzying, feramonal signature that he recognized as only her. That scent could rouse him from a coma, he thought, or, bring him to his knees. His heart rate skyrocketed in that moment, but the only move he made was to nod his head once and get up to retrieve another cup and saucer from the drain board. “This is England. There’s always more tea.” he said.

Evey took a seat across from V’s chair and waited as he poured the tea. When he was done he just stood there, apparently not prepared to say anything more. Typical, she thought. She’d have to engage him as always. It was a struggle to return here, and even as she made her way back down into the Gallery she wondered if she was making a mistake. Could he show her no encouragement? No sign that he missed her? Perhaps he hadn’t missed her. Perhaps her abrupt manner of leaving and his vendetta had erased any feeling that he might have had for her. Or, perhaps it was the guilt that he felt at breaking her. Maybe you just really could never go home again.

After the ordeal in the cell and her re-emergence into the Shadow Gallery, Evey had both loved and despised V. As she regained her physical strength, her hate abated into a semi-conscious sense of mistrust, but she noticed that V’s behavior towards her had changed: he was afraid of her. Whether it was fear of her condemnation, her rage, or just plain revulsion, he tread on eggshells around her which only continued to remind her of her experiences at his hands. Gone were the halcyon days of chess games, film nights, dancing, and mock swordplay. There was nothing between them but heavy memory, and so, when she was strong enough to live on her own, she left Valerie’s letter rolled up on the kitchen table overlaying a note that simply read: “I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of a better way to end this.” She made no promise of a return, and, truly, did not intend to make one. But, in her dreams every night she was with V, and though she found that her newfound freedom was easier to bare than she thought, the only time that she felt completely at peace was at night in her dreams. So, not with a little trepidation, she found her way back to this moment across from the man who had made her, hoping for a sign that her heartache held some meaning.

Awkwardness was like a physical being at the table with them. Evey bumbled in her rush to end the silence. “I’m not angry anymore, V.” She quickly raised the teacup to her lips and blew on her brew, buying time with her hands. “I’m sorry for the way I left. I didn’t want to continue on as we were, but it didn’t have anything to do with what you did to me.” Christ! she groaned inwardly, of course it had to do with what he did to her! This was not a promising beginning. V was still standing motionless over the teapot, and, as always, was unreadable behind his mask. Evey wanted to reach out and rip the damn thing off. If she had to lay her soul bare, he should have the courtesy to return the favor. “V, could you sit down? You’re making me nervous.”

“I’m sorry, Evey. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” V sat.

“You can beat me into unconsciousness with a leather strap, but you don’t mean to disturb me?” She was trying to point out his inconsistencies but it came out as an accusation.

“Sounds like you still have anger, after all.” His voice was level. There was no reading his reaction at all, and he wasn’t going to offer her anything. Evey fought back her disappointment with a chaser of angry frustration. It was all just a mind game and she was tired. Clearly, he wasn’t the man that she thought he was, and she had made a profound mistake in returning to him seeking comfort that he was incapable of giving.

V listened to her but barely took her meaning in. His responses were rote and causing her to become aggravated with him. He wanted to reach out and grab her, to tell her how much he had missed her. He wanted to apologize for all the things that held him back from her: his disfigurements, his vendetta, his stupid English diffidence, his guilt. She had given him something that he hadn’t expected to miss: his humanity. In her presence, he lightened. He found joy in the everyday. He laughed, he debated, he showboated, and he danced – all for her pleasure. And beyond that, his body responded to her. He had desires for the first time in his memory. He understood love and passion in an academic sense, but had no direct experience with it. In 20 years he hadn’t felt any yearning for it, not even unconsciously in his dreams. He didn’t masturbate or fantasize, and for all he knew, he was a virgin. He was overcome and overthrown by this woman, and totally at a loss for words. He had to do something or he was going to lose her again for good. His feelings for Evey were not simple or tender, and in his darker moments, he was afraid of what he would do if he truly allowed himself to indulge in them. In 5 days he would most likely be dead, so what did it matter if he risked it all right here and now? What if she reciprocated? What the hell would he do then? 

Evey rose to leave. “It was a mistake to come here. I’m sure that you’re busy with last minute preparations for the fifth. I just…” she couldn’t finish her thought but her eyes pleaded for understanding. “I’ll get out of your way.” As she turned and stepped back into the gloom of the main gallery she heard hurried scuffling and felt herself roughly turned around by her arm. Her heart leapt into her throat as she faced V, his hand gripping her so tightly that she thought that he was about to hit her. “ You just…what?” he hissed. “You just… WHAT?” this time with more desperation.

“I just … wanted to see you again, V. I just wanted to hear your voice one last time. I just wanted to know how you were. I’ve missed you,” she paused briefly “and I wanted to know if…. you had missed me too.” she said finally. The next few moments were going to ruin her. Her blood was roaring in her ears and she felt sickeningly light headed. Why was she prolonging this? Best to leave, put V and her life in the Gallery behind her. 

“Miss you?” he asked, almost as if he didn’t understand the meaning of the words. V hesitated for a moment while his mind went over his options for the next few seconds. Before Evey could muster an answer (or before he lost his confidence in his decision), he forcefully pulled her into him, knocking a bit of the wind out of her. Then, releasing her arm, he clamped his hand down over her eyes. She heard a slight fumbling and then she felt his lips on hers.

She hadn’t expected him to feel so warm; it was if he was running a fever. The knowledge that he was kissing her was shocking enough, but coupled with the sensation that he was searing her with his skin, provoked a brutal arousal in Evey. She felt a hot/cold flush travel up her spine like the electric current of fear, and she began to shake noticeably. For a moment she did nothing, then she wrapped her arms around his waist and dug her nails sharply into his doublet while she opened her mouth to deepen the kiss. Fear was not enough to stop her now. Encouraged by her, V grappled his free hand, which was also holding his mask, around her hips and crushed her into his chest. His lips strafed hers with more brutality, and as he lost himself in her scent, her taste, and the delicious pain that she was causing him with her nails, he bit her lower lip hard causing her to yelp. The sudden sound of pain snapped V from his revelry. He drew back and witnessed what he had done. He had manhandled, blinded and cut Evey’s lip open. 

Reality swirled and harried about him like a flock of dark, angry birds. Shame overtook him. As in most things, he was unfit for physical passion. He wanted to express his desire and had done so in the only way that he knew how, without subtlety or reverence. He could no longer ignore the two solitudes that warred inside him: the violent hedonist and the diffident gentleman. The gentleman knew that he had hurt Evey enough in their brief life together and couldn’t bear to do any more damage. The hedonist wanted to simply consume her – to have the small happiness that she afforded live inside of him forever. Even if she understood this paradox and agreed to it, he couldn’t allow it to happen. She had to go at once. He turned swiftly on his heel so that she wouldn’t see his uncovered face when he released his grip over her eyes, and he strode quickly to his bedroom and slammed the door behind him.

Evey was left staring agape at the closed door to V’s room. Shock and disbelief were vying for supremacy over the moment. “V?” she said more to herself than out loud. She tasted blood in her mouth and touched her fingers to her lips. They came back wet. The sight of her own blood did not alarm her. Instead, it was if she were a house in which all of the lights had been suddenly turned on. She finally understood something fundamental about V: his persona that had tormented her in her cell was closer to his true nature than the swashbuckling savior that he wanted her to believe in. Her knowledge of this was what he feared and why he was willingly to let her go so easily.

She stood thinking of nothing beyond this revelation for several minutes when she heard the screams and breaking glass come to her from across the Gallery.

“V!” she yelled in fear, and ran without hesitation through the darkness to the closed bedroom door.


	2. Blood Before Thought

Evey ran to V’s bedroom door with her heart in her throat. The screaming that had pierced the darkness and her thoughts moments earlier sounded like those of a slaughtered animal. It chilled her to her marrow, but she didn’t have time to think before her feet began to move – blood before thought. The screams ceased as suddenly as they had begun, and to Evey, the vacuum of silence that created was more frightening than anything she could have imagined. 

She scrambled at the doorknob with her fingers in the gloom. The knob turned but wouldn’t give her access to the room. Frantically, she tried again, and a third time with no result. She bodily flung herself, shoulder first into the door while cranking the knob desperately. The door made an impressive cracking noise but didn’t budge. Had V locked the door? Did he plan this scenario for his own perverse pleasure? Evey continued slamming herself into the oak door – three, four, five times – each time that she couldn’t open it elicited a less than subtle whimper from somewhere deep within her. Just as she thought that her shoulder would dislocate if she hit it any harder, the door gave with an astounding crack and she fell into the room swinging wildly from the effort. 

V stood doubled over before his dressing table, one hand on the dresser and one clutched to his chest. The dresser mirror and make-up lights that surrounded it were shattered all over the dresser and floor, while most of the contents of his dresser, desk and surrounding flat surfaces littered the floor as well. The sounds of breaking glass had only lasted for about 15 seconds, but in that time V had impressively laid waste to almost anything breakable within the room. He must have been wild with rage, Evey thought, like a trapped animal. With the sound of the door cracking, V’s head snapped sideways and he immediately screamed “GET OUT!” at Evey. It wasn’t until that moment that her mind registered what her eyes had lit on the moment that she set foot in the room: V wasn’t wearing his mask and wig. The broken lights around the mirror provided him with a pocket of twilight within the room, but Evey could still make out his features. “GET OUT OF HERE!!!!” he screamed again, but when she didn’t move he rushed at her with his left hand raised to strike her. 

Evey was frozen still. Rooted to the spot, she waited for his hand to fall upon her. “GET THE FUCK OUT!!! YOU ARE NOT WANTED, EVEY!!!” the scream reached a frenzied pitch that she had never heard from V before. He was truly out of his mind. He was two strides from her when the light hit his face full on and he was revealed to her. His expression was hideous, undisguised rage. His skin was an intricate spider web of white scar lines over crimsoned, puffy flesh. The skin had a waxy look to it, as if it were latex, and in some areas it looked almost translucent so that Evey could imagine seeing his blood moving through his system. His outer ears were gone, and the cartilage that remained appeared melted onto him. Similarly, his nose was mostly just a suggestion, while, strangely enough, he still had delicate eyelids and a pale, full, almost sensual mouth that was now pulled back into a frightening rictus over brilliantly white, straight teeth. His eyes were large and brown. From a distance it must have looked like he had no irises at all, just two burning black holes – demon eyes. 

He stopped short of her and swung his raised fist at her halting himself just before her cheekbone. She didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, she just stared. She could feel the heat of his hand - he was that close to her.

“Hit me.” She whispered almost inaudibly.

“What?” he stammered.

“Hit me.” She said again, this time more confidently. “Hit me, V, if it will make you feel better, but it won’t unmake this moment.”

His eyes raked her face for signs of a lie before his expression broke into the essence of remorse. The feral grin disappeared replaced by an indescribable look of infinite sadness and resignation. His shoulders slumped noticeable as if he were a marionette whose strings had been suddenly cut. Evey couldn’t ever remember seeing him exhibit anything but perfect posture. His eyes faded away to some distant point over her shoulder. It was as if his spirit had abandoned his body in that moment and nothing was left of V but his fleshy prison. It was then that Evey noticed that V was bleeding.

“V! Your hand! What the hell have you done?!”

V was unresponsive. Evey asked her question again. V looked down at his right hand clutched to his chest. It was bleeding profusely and had stained an entire side of his under blouse and vest. Blood was dripping onto his oriental rug. That will never come out, he thought absently. “I hit the mirror. And the lights. And the wall.” He stated dumbly.

“V, you may have broken something.”

“I think that I broke just about everything…” V said looking around the room.

“I’m serious, V. Why would you do this to yourself? It must hurt.”

“Not enough.” He said wistfully.

“What does that mean?” Evey was sick of his double-edged meanings.

“I just wanted to feel something other than the pain that was inside. Physical pain heals. I have been dealing with corporeal fragility for 20 years, and I am good at it. It is irrelevant to me, to my plans. I just move through it. But emotional pain,” here he stopped, and breathed in and out as if his lungs were about to collapse “is something that I don’t understand. I would rather cut myself wide open than feel any of this anymore, Evey.” His eyes were wide, glassy pools of hurt, and Evey realized with shock that this was the first time that they had had a personal conversation without the mask between them. The intensity of his expression was almost a sensory overload after nearly a year of living off of the emotional tidbits betrayed by his voice alone. The effect on Evey was like being sucker punched in the solar plexus. Damn him! Even with his armor stripped away, he still has the upper hand. She wasn’t prepared to address this just yet.

“I have to stop the bleeding and bandage this.” She was deliberately avoiding his gaze. “ I have to get some supplies from the bathroom.”

She quickly turned and left the room. The bathroom was on the other side of the main gallery and the transit time would give her a chance to evaluate her next move. V had been exposed and it hadn’t destroyed him, not yet anyway. Would he be able to take the final step and be honest with her about who he was as opposed to what he wanted to appear to be? And if he made that leap, could she follow him? She leaned her forehead against the medicine cabinet for a moment and enjoyed the coolness of its glass face. “Breathe,” she chanted inwardly, “just breathe. Christ! How did I get here? How did I get so far out of control?”

She returned to find V exactly where she had left him. He had made no attempt to retrieve a mask to cover him, or to even sit down. He was still dripping blood onto the carpet. He didn’t look at her; instead he just stared at the bedroom door listlessly. His face gave no hint as to his thoughts. “V, sit down here” She directed him towards the canopy bed that seemed to be the only surface in the room not covered in glass or detritus. He allowed himself to be led wordlessly like a child. Evey placed her supplies on the bed and bent down in front so as to wash his wounds while facing him. She worked silently washing his hand and removing glass shards with tweezers. A few of the cuts were deep but she didn’t think that she would need to stitch him up, which was of great relief to her and her limited nursing skills. After she had disinfected and wrapped his hand in gauze, she finally broke the silence “You’re lucky. It doesn’t look that bad at all. You’ll heal nicely.”

He looked at her and then away “ Scars heal, but I wouldn’t call that lucky.”

Evey rose up in front of him on her knees so that she was closer to his face. She placed her hands on his thighs so that she could feel his warmth through his clothes. She stared him directly in the eyes when she said, “It doesn’t look bad at all.” V felt her hands resting on him and tried not to imagine the emotions that had led him to this undignified event. Evey had seen him unmasked and there was no way to undo that. She would never again look upon him as the courtly, sophisticated, mysterious entity that he had worked so hard to create. She could never love him now. And he could no longer successfully hide his longing and lust for her behind his mask. She would read him and be revolted. She was putting up a brave front now, but the result was inevitable. His initial instinct was still the right one: she had to go. He had to concentrate on his vendetta, and in 5 days he would die and so would the pain in his heart. “Thank you, Evey. I’m sure that I’ll be fine.” He worked hard to keep both his voice and face neutral. “I appreciate your care and concern, but you shouldn’t feel obligated to stay. As you pointed out, I’m lucky,” here he made an unsuccessful attempt at a casual smile “and I’ll heal. I promise that I won’t repeat this foolhardiness. In fact, with your departure, I can guarantee that such thoughts will not occur again.”

Evey felt something inside of her crack. She blinked back her hurt and hoped that he couldn’t see the edge of tears that were filming her gaze. “We’re not going to talk about what happened here, are we?” she said softly. She squeezed her fingers into his legs to remind him that she wasn’t gone yet – nothing was real before they both made it happen. The sensation made a nice counterpoint to the throbbing in his hand. He wanted her closer, if only for a moment. He wanted the memory of her arms wrapped around him, the feeling of her breasts cresting with breath against his chest. He wanted her scent to transfer to his clothes – a tender memory to steel him for the dark days in front of him. But he also wanted more. His mind wandered into indigo territory almost immediately. He wanted to pull her head back and expose her neck to his teeth. He wanted to grip and tear at her flesh inside and out. He wanted to hear her moan exhaustively and know that he was the master of that sensation. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted. The throbbing in his hand became the throbbing in his torso, which became the trilling throughout him and the tingling as his skin yearned to be touched by her. He still hadn’t responded to her question. He was staring into her eyes and read the possibilities offered to him there. She doesn’t know what she’s asking, he thought. She has no idea what I’m capable of. He noticed the dried blood on her lower lip where he had bitten her. He reached to the bowl of water and washcloth at his feet that Evey had used on his hand. After finding a clean section of cloth, he dipped it in the water and raised it to her lips. His bandaged hand rose to hold her chin – just the fingertips – raising her chin slightly towards the light. His touch was like feathers: tickling but soft. Their lightness didn’t belie that he was directing her where to go. “Where do you want me to go, V?” she thought. Show me.

He rubbed her lip gently as if cleaning a fragile, irreplaceable thing. It took several passes before all of the blood came away, and with every wipe Evey’s lower lip pressed and plumped in a way that fascinated V beyond all else in that moment. When he regained his senses, he stopped wiping and instead gently brushed her clean lip with the edge of his left thumb. His rough, callused claw caressing her soft pinkness caused his stomach to tighten in anticipation of something that he could not name. Her mouth was slightly open, and he could feel the warmth of her shallow breathing as well as the dampness of her inner lip. The feeling caused his skin to prickle from his lower back up to the base of his neck. If he still had hair, it would have been standing straight up.

Evey had not stopped staring at him the whole time that he was ministering to her. She was lost in the ever-changing expressions that drifted over him like clouds across the desert. Though he tried to remain expressionless, a twitch of an eyelid or a tightening of his lips betrayed him; betrayals that his faithful mask had always hidden from her. In this new world of V, physical but suddenly silent, she had to come up with a new cipher with which to decode him. He was truly monstrous to look at. There was no doubt that he had good reason to hide his face and fear it’s revelation. With the exception of his bottomless brown eyes and the implausibility of his perfect teeth (given the deplorable state of English dentistry and his abuse at Larkhill, they seemed impossible), he was positively nightmarish. Evey couldn’t imagine what the rest of him looked like. But despite his freak show appearance, Evey was utterly enthralled. He was so flawed that it was almost poetically beautiful – like an abandoned building, it’s roof open to the sky, it’s foundations overgrown and colonized by dozens of night creatures. His harsh, corrupted features highlighted the soft regard of his eyes, as well as the unspoken sensations that flitted across them. But what was more was that he was real: flesh and blood man, not an idea, not a masked hero. This knowledge made her flush from tip to toe. She was a vessel of liquid heat that was running the risk of melting her delicate outer layer. She felt a pull on her groin and the tips of her breasts. What she really wanted to do was touch herself and relieve the tension slightly, but all she could do was stare at him. This is what she wanted and thought that he’d never give to her: his true self. But now that they were both face-to-face in the reality of the moment would she be able to convince him that her feelings were not some twisted form of Stockholm Syndrome? After all, how could someone come to love their tormentor without suffering from delusion or madness of some kind? How had she put aside her revulsion so easily? Could it be that V’s efforts to make her truly free, as his own murky past had, opened up the same violent seam in her that ruled him? Was it always within her, or was this unspeakable violence like a communicable disease? She felt the knife’s edge of madness slice through these thoughts, so instead of suffering a moment longer, she spoke.

“V.” she said his name almost to herself alone, as if she was linking his name to his person for the very first time.

“Yes, Evey?”

“I love you.”


	3. Falling Into Light

V’s thumb stopped caressing her lip, but his hand did not move. This is it, he thought. This is the moment that he had simultaneously dreamt of and feared. He must have misheard her, misunderstood her. Evey had just said that she loved him. It simply couldn’t be.

“Evey,” he said after a long, aching silence. “I don’t understand…” It was all that he could muster. She dug her fingernails into the flesh of his thighs enough to know that it would hurt though noting nothing registered on his face.

“Do you feel this?” she murmured.

“Yes.” It was an exhalation more than a response.

“Does it hurt?” He thought that she was seducing her way to a point, so he played along.

“Yes, more or less.” V was still holding her chin delicately with his damaged hand. He was overwhelmed by the desire to rake his fingers through her short curls and force his way into her mouth. It wouldn’t be so hard – she was only inches away – but part of him was perversely interested in where she was taking this. In that way, she had already won him over.

“Do you believe that I want to injure you by doing this?” Her voice was like silk in water.

Truthfully he thought, no, and shook his head. “Then, is it not possible that someone can show love through pain, as well as pleasure?” That one hit home. Had he not told both himself and Evey that he had tortured her for her own good? Had he not done it out of love? What he hadn’t admitted was that while he was causing her pain, he had loved her as well as the pain that he was inflicting on her. Every incident that she survived, every inch that she reclaimed from him caused him to love her more deeply than he thought possible. Like a drug fiend chasing a high, he wanted to hurt her forever just to see her rebound and be ensorcelled by her effort. But was that love? And what did she get out of it?

Evey dug her nails in deeper, and this time his legs jumped as the nerves transmitted the pain. V hissed through his clenched teeth at her, but didn’t remove her hands from him. “Do you love me, V?” More questions.

“Yes.” His eyes narrowed and darkened as he said it. “Yes.” This time it was a secret whisper laced with meaning that they had yet to discover.

“I believe that.” She whispered as she used her entrenched nails to slide his thighs slightly apart. “Did you love me when you had me in that cell? When you tortured me?”

“Yes. Undoubtedly.” Now that his legs were apart he noticed that he was semi-hard. Evey hadn’t looked away from him this whole time, and he bashfully hoped that she hadn’t noticed his arousal. This whole situation was quickly spiraling out of his control, and he was both scared and excited at the prospect.

“So,” she wriggled her way between his knees. “if you can cause pain for love, and you can endure pain for love, why can’t you accept that I can do the same?” His hands now lay at his sides on the bedcover. Evey was in between his legs as he sat at the edge of the bed. Her face was so close to his that he could barely focus his eyes on her features. She stared him down in an uncompromising fashion that made him believe for a split second that she could see into him. His mouth was dry and his hands involuntarily clutched the bedspread. He was mentally close to the edge of his restraint. He felt his animal instincts rising within him – she was too close, she was pushing him too hard for answers and he was feeling cornered. “If your love is real, and not a form of your lunacy, why can’t my love for you be just as real, despite it being born of pain?”

His interior dam burst at this suggestion. She had to know – he didn’t want to keep it inside anymore. It would cost him his dignity and his gentlemanly facade that he had invented for her, but she didn’t believe in that mask anymore so he really wasn’t risking much. Perhaps the one last noble thing that he could do was to drive her away. 

“BECAUSE I’M A SICK DEGENERATE BORN OF HUMANITY’S PERVERSENESS!” He bellowed. “I HAVE BASTARDIZED THE NOBLE FEELINGS THAT YOU SO RICHLY DESERVE FOR MY OWN DESIRES! I WANTED BETTER FOR YOU – I WANTED YOU TO ENDURE WITH COURAGE AND GRACE AND STRENGTH, AND BE THE EMBODIMENT OF EVERYTHING THAT I AM NOT! IF YOU LOVE ME FOR WHO I REALLY AM, BECAUSE OF WHAT I DID TO YOU THEN I HAVE TAINTED YOU! CAN’T YOU SEE THAT?!” His brilliant, feral teeth made a shocking appearance again in a sneer.

Evey was stunned and momentarily speechless. Her ears rang from being too close to V when he erupted. Tainted? Life taints. People imprint upon you. She was hopelessly embossed by her time with him. He had reversed her magnetic poles and she wasn’t sure that she could return to true north again. It was a done deal, no matter what he had intended for her. She moved her hand from his thigh to steady herself and brushed his erection causing them both to gasp for entirely different reasons. She looked at him and then launched herself hungrily at his lips. The moment that they connected Evey felt has if she had been plugged into a wall socket, and that the energy was causing her limbs to move of their own accord. She leaned into his chest heavily forcing him to hold them both upright while her hands grabbed at both his blouse and the skin on the back of his neck. As she scratched his neck in her ferocity, he let out a growl of discomfort that made her weak in the knees. She pulled away abruptly.

“I’m not some tarnished little angel, V.” She ducked into his neck quickly and nipped at the skin under his jaw line, then ducked back out just as quickly. “Life took care of my innocence long before you showed up.” Again, she leaned into his neck and took another chunk of him with her. He was gasping, bewildered, and she loved it, but she wasn’t through making her point yet. “You made me who I am now, V, so take some credit for it. And also hold room for the possibility that I might have turned out this way without you!” She sealed her argument with a kiss so passionate she feared that she might have nowhere else to go afterward. V groaned has he accepted her tongue into his mouth and tried to accept her last proposition into his consciousness. He had refused to accept any scenario that characterized Evey as anything less than a victimized innocent. But no one remains innocent forever. He had always felt responsible for usurping her childlike simplicity, but if she was right, and she had already been well on the road to hard experience before he met her, then she might be more like him than he thought. She might actually be able to love him as he was. Abolishing the virginal image of Evey would be heart rending but less painful than the denial of his feelings for her based on his splintered and inappropriate personality. If she could face him for who he was, and he could accept the woman that she had become, wasn’t that a doorway to his salvation? 

“You wanted me to be courageous and strong, so stop treating me like a vestal virgin. Have confidence in what you’ve given me – let me have this! Let me inside! It - won’t – hurt - me!” She said breathlessly, hoping that her last sentence would convince him. She truly couldn’t keep up this pace of conversational debate and seduction. Her ferocious arousal and her fear that he would reject her after all of her efforts at persuasion were pushing her heart rate to a dangerous high. She was finding it increasingly hard to catch her breath. It would be fittingly ironic if she had a coronary event while V thrashed about in his murky mental morass, she thought.

Faster than she imagined a person could move, V grabbed the back of her neck and cupped her buttocks while lifting, turning and throwing her down onto the bed in one fluid motion. Christ, Evey thought, how did he move so quickly? Though the mattress was soft, she landed on her shoulder still sore from her encounter with V’s oak door and she winced as she simultaneously attempted to calm her breathing. She also noticed that V gasped slightly has he moved over her, noting that he had temporarily forgotten about his bandaged hand. The gauze started to turn pink – he had re-opened a cut or two, no doubt. “Are you okay, V?” she whispered.

“Stop talking, Evey.” He growled at her in a tone full of dark possibilities, while he grabbed her sore shoulder and squeezed slightly. She yelped at the shock but smiled knowingly as the electric bolt of pain enlivened her senses. He wanted her completely focused, and it was hard to imagine that she could be otherwise at this moment. His lips were on her again; forcing his way into her mouth without pretense while his good hand caressed her neck, her collarbone, and the valley between her breasts. His lips and hands were on fire – how could anyone run so hot all of the time? It added an extra level of sensory awareness and made Evey’s skin prickle. His skin was rough and supple at the same time, like well-tended leather. His raised scars caused slight scrapes along Evey’s more sensitive parts. The feeling was unlike anything that she had experienced before and she gave herself over to its enjoyment fully. His natural musk was laced with hints of tea tree oil and aloe, which must have been part of some body moisturizer that he used in order to make his skin bearable. Evey breathed in deeply and then noticed another scent: copper. Both of them had managed to forget that half of his blouse was covered in fresh blood. Evey rose up half sitting in bed and pushed V back. His eyes registered rejection, but Evey made short work of wrestling him out of his bloody vest and blouse, and then took in the maze of scars that crisscrossed his broad shoulders and chest. She traced the most vicious-looking one across his upper torso and down over his abdominals towards the waistband of his pants. He leaned his head back and let out a sigh towards the ceiling. He began to shake all over, but Evey was barely touching him. “That one is particularly sensitive, dear.” He panted with effort. She smiled cryptically. 

V had allowed himself to get physically run away with in this situation and he was already close to climax without having more than just touched Evey. His penis pushed painfully and insistently against his trousers, and it was causing him to lose ground quickly. He wasn’t prepared for this to be over so soon. He had to regain some control. He had to set the pace. He pushed her back onto the bed and drove his left hand under her skirt where it immediately found a home in her hot, wet core. No vestal virgin, indeed! He had expected to be thwarted by undergarments, and a devilish smiled curled his lips at this sudden discovery. Evey gasped loudly at the unanticipated penetration and arched her head back into V’s mountain of pillows. He began to move his finger rhythmically within her trying to keep in sync with her hip movements. He allowed his hand to work of it’s own accord instead focusing his attention on her face as she struggled to negotiate each new sensation that he offered her. Wave after wave of arousal washed over Evey and with each crest she thought that she would lose all control for good. He added a second finger to partner with the first working them within her right up to the knuckle on each digit. She raised her hips to adjust the angle of his approach and caused his fingers to reach that point within her which made her vision go white with the intensity of feeling. Her moans were replaced by animal noises and panting that would soon cause her to hyperventilate if left unchecked. Her hands grabbed at her thighs and dug in, mimicking the marks that she had inflicted on V. 

V was pleased but wanted more. He had regained some of his control, some of his power over her, and now he intended to enjoy it. He removed his hand from her, eliciting a groan of disapproval from Evey. He fumbled at the access to her skirt and instead found a major seam and ripped it straight down the middle flinging the wrap to the floor. “Hey!” Evey proclaimed but was soon enveloped in her illicit white light again as V headed down between her thighs. His lips and nose brushed her inner thighs already warm and moist from his digital efforts. Her familiar scent of rosehips was now commingled with a headier mixture of musk and a scent that V would have categorized as salt sea air. And she was delicious. He took and long loving taste of her with his tongue that produced another much-desired moan of appreciation from her as the tip of his tongue sought out her clitoris. Wondrous, he thought with unabated joy. How miraculous that we were built for pleasure this way – how amazing that our bodies won this battle and sought each other out even as our minds tried to hold us back! He never thought that he would ever feel anything as divine as this in his lifetime – what a surprise! 

V let out a murmur of appreciation for the noises that he was rending from Evey when she gasped in a new way. As he moved his tongue with more confidence he chuckled softly which produced the same gasp as before. Suddenly V hit on something. He began to moan soft and low during his ministrations. The resulting vibrations seemed to heighten Evey’s pleasure in an unseen way: the greater the vibration, the more she ground herself into him. He wondered how much further he could push her, or himself for that matter. 

Evey was bewildered by this new sensation. At first, she had raised her head to look down at him and thought, “Is he HUMMING?!?” but the light of exhilaration knocked her flat again before she could question what he was doing to her. She arched painfully backwards nearly lifting herself clear off of the bed not seeing or hearing anything but her own body’s selfish demands for more. All of her pain and doubt from the past several months seemed to melt away in a moment as V bent her in new untried forms of ecstasy. The closeness that she had felt towards him after his ordeal at Larkhill had been revealed to her was now being mimicked by this new physically connection. Would anyone ever know her as well as this man? Would she ever let anyone else this far into her darker recesses? It wasn’t just about passion; it was about staring unflinchingly into that ebony abyss and feeling at home as the abyss smiled back at you.

V couldn’t take anymore. He wanted to string this sensation along forever, but his body had other more pressing demands. He raised himself up and pressed his left hand down on Evey’s arched abdomen gently but firmly. With his bandaged right he fumbled at the buttons of his trousers but found that Evey’s wrapping had immobilized his thumb making the action twice as difficult as it should have been. Evey recovered from her revelry enough to see the problem and quickly helped V to free his member. Their only communication was their tandem rhythm of panting. V’s pants were already damp from his anticipation and as he thrust into Evey without preamble he found that she was so wet that he temporarily couldn’t establish any friction between them. He re-entrenched his position by spreading his knees apart as far as his half-removed pants would allow and thrust again with his hips. His awareness of what was happening between them faded into the background as he lost himself in the feeling of being enveloped in soft, feminine warmth. It was more than just a physical sensation; it was like returning to a place of safety that he had long since given up seeing again. His body moved of it’s own accord and he was swept away by it’s current. He felt complete. He felt known. God help him, he felt happy. He imagined free falling from a great height through blinding light his whole life, but now he was unafraid because he knew that he was falling into Evey instead of uncertainty. 

There were no words anymore. No more debates or even intelligible phrases; just utterances involving a lot of consonants punctuated by the occasional vowel from both of them. Evey was naked from the waist down and V was bare from the ass up, both growling at each other. As V neared his limitations, he thrust into her with increasing aggression each time lifting her partially from the bedcover backwards towards the headboard. The antique frame creaked from the strain that it probably hadn’t experienced in over 50 years – apparently everything in the Gallery would be feeling sore or broken tonight. Evey had been ready for him to come before he realized it and wrapped her legs firmly around his hips to encourage as deep an orgasm as he could manage. She tilted her hips upwards and pushed back against him as he tried to push her forward taking him in as completely as possible. It was too much for him. He retreated for one last run and pushed brutally back into her as he exploded into a series of spasms and shivers. A scream-like roar similar to the one that Evey heard from his locked room ripped from his body and drowned out Evey’s own staccato climax. V collapsed onto Evey’s chest, his face finding a soft natural home in the crook of her neck. Evey’s body tingled deliciously all over but also was completely drained to the point that she wondered if she could lift her arms. V panted and moaned softly into the side of her neck. He sounded like a child half awakened by a nightmare and trying to soothe himself. He began to shiver all over and her heart leapt into her throat with the overwhelming emotions that assailed her in that moment. She felt that she was physically radiating her love for him; that if he were to look at her now he would see it almost like an aura around her. She wrapped her arms around him, one hand cradling his scarred, bald head against her.

“Evey.” was all he could manage to say, but with it, carried all the weight of his longing and thanks. Evey felt that her heart might burst. She closed her eyes to hold back the tears and held him closer.


	4. While Men Play, God Laughs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “As I turned to go  
>  You looked at me for half a second,  
>  With an open invitation  
>  For me to go into temptation  
>  Knowing full well the earth will rebel.  
>  Into temptation, safe in the wide open arms of hell.”   
> \- Crowded House, “Into Temptation”

Half awakened, V rolled onto his side in bed. The sensation of the linen sheets brushing across his bare skin was cooling, and calming. He had never slept nude before. In the blackness of his bedroom, the soft mattress and the silky sheets caused his sleepy mind to become momentarily disoriented. Then, in a flash, the night’s events came back to him in Technicolor. A visit – conflict – pain - revelation - pleasure. Unexpected pleasure, V quantified to himself as he reached out across the bed for Evey. His hand hit only air.

V’s body snapped to attention as fear and apprehension flooded his system like a poison. Would she be so cruel as to leave him without a word again? It would be a cunning and sticky form of revenge if she had returned to seduce him and leave him as exposed and raw as he had left her after her time in the cell. Perhaps she had regrets about their intimacy. Perhaps he disgusted her after all. Was it possible to fake that kind of passion? Would she go that far in order to intentionally hurt him? He knew so little about the Machiavellian nature of scarred women – only what his books told him – that his first thoughts were exclusively of betrayal. Fear was replaced with anger and an ill-advised sense of righteous indignation. How dare she! Using his one weakness against him in repayment for everything that he had given to her! She had no idea how difficult it had been for him to accept the path that she had forced him to walk this night - it changed everything. How could she offer him a glimpse of redemption and then slam the door to it in his face?

The only light in the room was coming from the crack under the doorframe. V swung his feet out of the bed and made for the door without thinking about clothes or the dangerous mess on the floor of his bedroom. He tripped over what was left of Evey’s discarded skirt and thought with relief that at least he hadn’t dreamt it all. Occasionally, he had trouble distinguishing between what he wanted and what actually was. He knew that about himself. But he was certain this time: this was real and he was going to see it through with the same grim determination that he had unleashed onto his vendetta. He opened the door and saw that the light was coming from the bathroom across the Gallery. This dim illumination was his only guide in the cool, cave-like gloom of his home. Striding across the chilly flagstone floor he felt as if his beloved Shadow Gallery had become a hostile and alien landscape, and he a stranger in it. This sudden loss of joy in his creature comforts felt akin to mourning someone’s suicide. I guess some things, once done, cannot be undone, thought V bitterly; the Gallery could no longer shelter him. All he wanted was warm, rapturous understanding. And arms, and lips, and fingers, and sighs in the night. 

The bathroom light went out leaving V in absolute darkness. He stood still a moment waiting for his eyes to adjust. He tried to adjust his breathing as well, which was fluctuating almost as wildly as his emotions. She’s still here, he thought. But was she returning to his bed or had he caught her leaving him? He felt a tremendous urge to break her before allowing her to leave him, but some interior voice reminded him that he had tried that once before and it hadn’t worked then either. 

Evey padded blindly across the Gallery floor as quickly as she could. She was naked and freshly washed making the perpetual chill of the Gallery especially irksome. She was shivering; her teeth chattering slightly, partly from the cold and partly from the anticipation of being back in bed spooned up behind V. She wished that she had left another light on but did not want to wake V, who seemed completely exhausted. These final days with his 20-year vendetta so close at hand must have been like torture to him. Add to that the highly emotional last few hours, and it was easy to imagine why he just needed to shut down for a time. She hoped that he would sleep for a while longer so that she could privately enjoy being in his company without reflection on what it all meant. However he felt about her, she knew that his plan for the Fifth would take precedence over all. She suspected that he might even attempt to drive her away again so that he could focus all of his energies on its outcome. Where that left him, or her, afterward was the subject of Evey’s private hurt: she believed that V’s plan didn’t allow for either of them to survive. She didn’t know how to address it. Now she was shivering for a new reason.

She felt the heat an instant before she hit it. In the underground dark it was impossible to see anything yet V had managed to find her and place himself directly in her path. She smacked into his naked torso and felt the scrape of scars against her goose pimpled skin. He grasped her upper arms in a painful vise grip and growled, “Caught you!”. She let out a startled yelp at his sudden, invisible appearance, and another at his hurtful grip. 

“Oh, V – I didn’t wake you did I?” She placed her palms flat against his chest and noticed that his breathing was shallow, his heartbeat racing. “Umm, I didn’t want to disturb you, you seemed so tired.”

“Where were you going?” Once again Evey had nothing to go on but the tone of his voice, and he sounded angry, - hurt, even. His grip tightened and he shook her slightly. Her chest tensed as he raised her slightly off the floor onto her toes.

“I had to wash up.” She spoke quickly; bewildered by his aggression, and then a thought dawned on her. “ V, did you think that I had left you? Left the Gallery again?” She paused for a second as his grip loosened. “I’m naked, V, in more ways than one. Did you think that I would run off into the night in such a state? To go where? To be with whom, when EVERYTHING that matters to me is here! You have locked yourself away from humanity for too long if you think that such connections are common or so disposable!” Her ire was rising with every syllable that she uttered. “I came back to you, remember? You were the one who wanted me gone.” She was shaking with the fury of her words now, radiating her own intense heat. She had balled her fists and had slammed them into V’s chest repeatedly to emphasize her point. He relaxed his grip and lowered her back onto her feet, but had failed to say anything, hiding there in the dark. “Christ, V, say something! I can’t keep fighting this war with you. Everything that’s mine to give is at your feet – whatever’s left of me is yours. It was a gift promised to you when you first brought me here, but unfulfilled until tonight. If that isn’t convincing enough for you, then I think that you prefer this prison to possibility, and so, I’ll leave you in it!” She spat out these final words at him enraged at his cluelessness. 

“It’s harder to be free than not, V – you taught me that.” 

Her voice sliced across him like a hidden butterfly knife. By turns he felt rageful, ashamed, foolish, and yes, strangely elated at Evey’s angry declaration. He quickly thought what so many before him have silently pondered: if relationships are this complicated and painful, why do we bother with them at all? V was so tired and confused. He couldn’t remember feeling so uneasy about anything since his torture sessions at Larkhill. That was it, then: love is torture he concluded.

V was at a loss. Again. He felt an insane pull towards Evey: to be known, to be accepted. But not just by anyone – by this one person – it had to be Evey, and the reason for that was unknown to him. It wasn’t because she was the only friend that he had, or that she was the only person to touch him in 20 years, and it wasn’t even that she knew more about him than anyone else. It was something deeper; something almost sub-conscious. He felt as if they were of one mind, fighting their way to the nucleus of self- understanding from entirely different directions. Trying to reach her was driving him mad.

V ran his good hand through Evey’s short curls and pulled her head back as his fingers nestled in the soft hair at the base of her skull. She let out a cry of protest and struggled to get free of his grip but his broken hand held her fast as he roughly kissed her. Her anger had warmed her, which caused him to ache with a new, terrible longing. He broke the kiss as she struggled against him again, this time with less enthusiasm. He pulled her head into his chest and encircled his arms around her with aggressive possession. His lips brushed her ear. “I’m sorry for my behavior, Evey. Please….please….don’t make me explain how it would….end me….if you left now.” His voice was barely a whisper and so threaded with sadness that she couldn’t help but shiver at the uneasiness that his vulnerability provoked in her. Her knees betrayed her and she was forced to grip his mid-section with all of her strength so that she would not crumple at his feet. For a solitary moment they stood gripping each other fiercely, shivering in the darkness. 

Evey kissed his chest where her head had come to rest. The strange sensation of overwhelming heat where their bodies touched and the icy chill where they did not motivated Evey to move herself closer to V. She clamped down on all rational impulses and gave herself over to the authority of her physical needs alone. She moved her fingers up and down his back, picking up any interesting trail that his scars provided and following them wherever they led her. V sighed in her ear with a mixture of relief and wonder. His tongue too began a journey of its own down along her neck, across her collarbone and finally to her suprasternal notch where he breathed her in deeply. With a grunt, he raised her up above his hips cradling her backbone with one hand and arranging her legs around his waist with the other. She smiled as she buried her face in the side of his neck breathing in everything about his arousal. The heat from their bodies and from their breath melted something within her and she felt wetness well up from her eyes, her mouth and between her legs. Without her bidding, her hand slipped down between their crushed torsos and made contact with his member now angrily straight and eager for battle.

V’s left brain turned off whenever Evey touched him. His possession of language, learned behaviors and most higher reasoning functions seemed to be nullified by the synaptic overload of the thought: she - is - touching - me. This gave his baser instincts free reign over him. He wanted her that instant; sooner, if it was possible, but was left with the dual conundrum that he couldn’t see his way back to his room, and that he wasn’t going to make it that far anyway. It was here that his right brain improvised. V tore Evey from her grip around his body, with no small measure of pain to himself, and threw her to the stone floor. Evey didn’t even have time to gasp. V’s hands shot out again from the darkness and flipped her by the waist from her back onto her stomach. Breathless and confused, Evey tried to scramble upright, if only to provide less surface area to the frigid stone floor. Rough hands were on her again halting her progress while raising her hips and fondling her ass and thighs like soldiers on a scouting mission for their blind leader. “V!” Evey cried out, partially as a plea and partially in dismay. His fingers dug into her hips as he dragged her across the floor and drove into her. She grunted in pain as she felt split in two from shoulders to groin. She raised herself again in order to pull away and relieve the pressure on her pelvis when he pulled her back and drove into her further. Evey felt the skin on her knees and elbows burn from scraping across the uneven stone floor and her vision turned white as she struggled to catch her breath. V continued to pulse behind her seemingly lost to her distress as he grunted in time with his thrusts. In between rhythmic jolts she tried again. “V…please. I’m still here….”

The tiny voice in the blackness had a clarion effect on him. He became still while remaining inside her. He was silently grateful that they couldn’t see each other in this moment. He covered his eyes with his bandaged hand trying to hide the distastefulness of the situation from the one person who couldn’t avoid it. As he tried to gently pull out, Evey grabbed his free hand and placed it over her left breast. She wriggled backwards onto him, encasing him with her warmth again as she re-iterated “I’m still here, V.” A moment bounced between them before V let out a long sigh and leaned across her back and felt the warmth of all of their connections. Her heartbeat pulsed strong and evenly under his hand. She was the definition of strength in this moment while he was a tangled riot of miscues. 

They remained still and silent for a moment that stretched out in a way that makes one question time’s constancy. Their actions had rippled out across the calm surface of the Gallery making this sudden stillness all the more serene by contrast. Finally, V placed his mouth next to Evey’s ear and began to whisper so lowly that his words barely contained breath. He lay across her back and spoke in an unbroken stream for several minutes, his thoughts pouring out of him like water and into her. Evey didn’t move a muscle. If there had been any available light, her only visible reaction would have been the dilation of her   
pupils and the faint glassy sheen that they developed. She waited for him to finish, and when he did she turned her face sideways and leaned her temple to his forehead. She searched herself for some kind of response but didn’t have the same resources as he, and instead hoped that this simple gesture could telegraph all that was left mute in her by his words. 

V smiled in the dark: a détente had been reached. She had calmed him. Though only she could cause him to completely lose control over himself, it was she who managed his volatility with grace – and the irony of this was not lost on him. He nuzzled her neck and gently nipped at her feeling his rapture descend upon him again. She began to move slyly beneath him trying to encourage him to finish what he had started. With renewed friction his desire returned and emboldened his flagging member within her. The strange interplay between body and mind was a continuing mystery to him, he thought. How could one pass through so many emotional portals in so little time, each having a different physiological reaction attached to it. He had so much to learn. 

He resumed his rhythm, slowly and more reverently than before, but quickly escalating in ferocity. While still half draped across her back, V pressed Evey’s shoulders to the floor causing both of their backs to arch and giving him a much more satisfying angle with which to work. Somehow, neither one of them could bring themselves to break the silence that they had created together, even now. In the stillness, the only sounds to signal their climax were that of skin rubbing against stone and raspy, half-caught breath. V’s hand abandoned Evey’s breast and snaked its way down her stomach, past her tiny curls and into her warm seam. Her hips bucked in response to his new attention and her head leaned back towards his but, still, she would not cry out. A new wetness flushed her inner thighs and around him, which was his only clue that she was close to bursting. He had been close to the edge since he stormed out of his room, and now gave himself permission to let go. His body on autopilot, the rhythm took care of itself carrying them both to the precipice and then gleefully over it. His ragged breath heated her back as he stifled a deep moan of pleasure, instead sinking his teeth into her shoulder as he shuddered with her. 

They both lay on the stone floor for a while just breathing. V arose first but Evey was too tired to follow. Then she was cradled by warm arms, lifted and moved through space and air. After being gently deposited onto the bed in V’s room, the room became etched in dim, faraway light as he turned on a lamp in the room’s corner. Carefully picking his way through the crap strewn across the floor, V approached Evey outstretched on his bed. The faint light painted everything in sepia tones, like an old photograph. Patches of black on her knees and elbows marred Evey’s subtle paleness: she was bleeding. V knelt by the bedside and took in her injuries. The knees were the worst; the elbows were more friction burned than anything. He laid a hand on her shoulder, like a doctor delivering bad news to a patient, then rose and left the room without a word. Evey stared at the door long after his departure, too exhausted to much of anything but lie there and bleed. In the low light her eyes fell to the carpet stained by V’s blood earlier that evening. Oh dear, she thought randomly, that’ll never come out.

V returned with a basin of water, towels and dressings, and set about cleaning her up. He gently washed her wounds and bound her knees in gauze strips, then, as if in some religious trance, he methodically washed and dried her from head to toe. He never said a word. Fighting emotional as well as physical exhaustion, Evey submitted to his bizarre ritual and instead focused on the sweet lulling effect of the lavender-scented water. She breathed deeply and soon found her eyelids drooping and her breathing slowing. Eventually she was unaware of anything but the smell of flowers and the slow pressure of V’s hands. Darkness swallowed her as if putting her away for safekeeping.

\-----------------------------

Evey had no idea what time it was. She awoke and the room was still in shadow. She rolled over in bed and found the indentation where V should have been, but he wasn’t there. She half sat up and let her eyes adjust to the gloom: the mess had been cleared away, the broken mirror and lights had been removed. How long had she slept? 

Then she smelled the bacon.

Evey wandered into the kitchen bleary-eyed and angelically dressed in one of V’s linen tunics. He smelled the lavender and turned to watch her collect herself with amusement: Evey was not a morning person. But she had a weakness for bacon. “Good morning.” he offered.

“Is it? I mean, not is it a good morning, but… is it morning?” she stuttered.

“Well, maybe not. Technically, I suppose that we could call this brunch.” He nodded towards the table laid out with eggs, bacon, tomatoes, toast and tea. Two place settings. 

“Are you eating with me?” she gaped.

“I certainly hope so, otherwise it’s a terrible waste of fresh produce. Besides,” here he smiled slyly while pouring the tea “I have managed to work up quite an appetite.”

Evey blushed and accepted the seat that he offered to her. She had never eaten with him before, but, since the mask was no longer necessary, it seemed a natural thing to do. The intimacy of the previous hours had caused her to feel stupidly self-conscious now, and she found that she couldn’t make a conversation with him at all. She tried to disguise her awkwardness with intense concentration on her breakfast instead. He stared at her, idly sipping his tea and picking at his meal. Evey tried to avoid his glance but the silence began to roar in her ears, so she braced herself and put down her fork.

“Is there something that you want to say to me?”

This is it, she thought, the old light-of-day conversation. He’s going to ask me to go. He’ll ask me to do it out of love, because of what happened last night, but he’ll want me gone. And I won’t fight him anymore. There are only so many opportunities that you can offer a person.

“Ah, well… I don’t know how to ask…” He fidgeted brusquely in his chair, cleared his throat, played with the butter knife. “It’s almost the Fifth, and, in light of last night, I need to ask you to do something very important for me. It may be difficult for you, but if you have any feeling for me at all, I ask you to do it.” He looked up at her then and his eyes were dark and glassy. Here it comes, she thought as she held her breath.

“Stay.”

She blinked. He looked confused.

“Stay, with me.” He tried again, each word ripping from him like removing an organ. “Here, in the Gallery, until the Fifth. Just…stay, Evey.” He sighed; all eloquence had left him.

Evey pushed back from the table and stood up. She crossed the kitchen, hitched up the tunic and placed herself on his lap. She held his disbelieving face in both hands and chastely kissed him on the lips.

“Yes.” she said simply.  
\--------------------------------------

And so they spent five days together, mixing tender early memories with newer, more understanding ones. They talked, as they never had before: man to woman, not teacher to pupil. They spoke of nonsense and revolution, of love and fear, of ideas and realities. And sometimes, quite often in fact, they found better things to do than talk. But the one thing that they never broached to one another was life after the Fifth. It was the undiscovered country and neither of them was brave enough to set foot there. Yet.

The morning of the Fifth arrived and Evey felt V leave the bed early. Her heart filled with a sick trilling of anticipation. She left him to his private thoughts, checklists and last minute maneuvers while she lay awake trying not to count down the hours until the end of everything. Their combined scent permeated every pore of her and every surface of that room, clinging like a reminder of a broken promise. She could try to think positively, but something in her said that it could only end one way. She could not fight what was coming – it had to be – but that did not mean that she did not fervently wish that the universe would make a different choice for them. She ferociously blinked back tears as she rose to meet the day.

V was gone most of the day and did not return until mid-evening. Evey did not ask where he had been. She was dressed in a tight-fitting pant and turtleneck combo, all black. V found it odd: he’d never seen her wear black before. They almost looked like twins. He found her in the kitchen where she had uncorked a cabernet and had two glasses waiting. He doffed his hat and cloak but remained masked. It was the first time he had worn it since they had been together. Tonight he wasn’t her V, he was Guy Fawkes and he had to maintain the illusion, if only for himself. He also couldn’t bear to face her without it, not tonight. If she saw how much doubt he had about his plan, how much he wanted it to end another way, she might convince him to abandon his ideals for a selfish patch of happiness with her, and he had worked too hard for that to happen. 

Evey smiled at him and poured the wine. She handed him a glass and raised her own towards him.

“A toast – for tonight.” Valiantly affecting bravado. “Just a little taste won’t hurt…” She cocked an eyebrow when she noticed that he hadn’t raised his glass. He slowly undid his mask, placed it on the kitchen table and raised his wineglass. Now he, too, had to affect some phantom strength. 

“A toast!” Evey continued. “To freedom from the tyranny that would hold us back from our better selves. To the hope of being whole once again.” Her eyes shone with purpose, love and sadness. V thought no expression suited her more. They clinked glasses and they drank deeply. 

“Mmmm, a fine vintage. Where did you find it?”

“In your secret stash in the room next to your private study.” Her tone was playful but her expression was weary.

“I never showed you my study.” V’s fingers started to tingle and his throat felt dry. “How did you find your way there?”

“It’s not hard when you know how someone’s mind works.” Her expression suddenly changed. She looked as if she was on the verge of tears.

“Evey, what is it? What’s wro…” V’s tongue stopped working as the dryness became searing heat. His fingers went from tingling to numb in an instant and he dropped the wineglass watching it shatter across the floor as if it were happening in a movie. He looked back at Evey and tried to speak in vain. She made no move to help him. A rogue tear escaped her as he lost all feeling from the waist down and crashed to the floor. She stood over him for a few moments then bent down to brush an errant strand of his wig off of his face. His eyes were the only form of communication left to him and he stared at her fully dilated in shock and disbelief. He begged the silent question: why?

“I can’t make you see it now,” Her voice was barely holding it together as tears rolled down her cheeks. She leaned in close enough for him to taste her breath. “But please know that what I do now, I do out of love.” She brushed his unmoving lips with a kiss.

“I love you, V.” she whispered in his ear.

Evey stood up, retrieved his mask from the table and grabbed his hat and cloak. She moved out of his field of vision as he fought to regain some control over his neck and arms. He heard footsteps leaving the kitchen and he flopped his head sideways to see him staring back at himself. Guy Fawkes in his boots, cloak, hat, even sporting his secondary knife belt. The smiling face grinned back at him as it had so many times before in his mirror as he prepared for an escapade. But this version of him was smaller, slighter, a little lost in the cape and mask. This version of him was Evey. 

Every fiber of his being screamed “NO!” And, with that silent scream he lobbed his near-paralyzed arm at Evey’s boot and grabbed hold. She tried to shake him loose but he held firm with whatever determination he had left. Evey turned on her heel, raised her other foot and kicked him solidly in the head.


	5. Distant Bright Lights

His mind was dark but alive. As if sealed within a collapsed mining shaft, he patiently waited for the earth to re-adjust itself and provide him with a beam of light that would lead him back towards reality. A fuzzy numbness pervaded everything so that even if he feared the dark there was nothing that he could do to comfort or free himself of it. Nothing to do but wait. He vaguely remembered medical tales of “Locked In” syndrome where patients were mentally aware of everything but incapable of communication or movement, and he wondered what happened to them when the waiting for release gave way to panic and eventual madness. No one can hear you scream inside of yourself.

An edge of the gloom lightened. Physical escape was impossible but his mind wriggled and flopped back and forth, swishing his limbless self towards the light like a newborn tadpole. He made seemingly endless circles in the grey ether while rising slowly upwards. Hurry, hurry, please hurry! He began to feel solidness beneath his body, he became aware of his limbs in their forced relaxation; he couldn’t move them but he knew that they were there. Slate grey gave way to an unidentifiable murk and finally a grimy white that made his eyes blink with irritation. With more blinking he could make out shapes, hard edges of familiar things. The cut stone ceiling of his kitchen coalesced into view as well as the tops of his kitchen cabinets. He felt the penetrating cold of the tiles beneath him; his fingertips began to twitch across them. He could feel his face entirely now and tried to turn his head with limited results. He opened his mouth and tried to speak. “Muuuhh…” was all that he could manage. Dammit, hurry up! How long have I been here? He forced himself to tense and relax various muscle groups until a minimum of feeling and control was restored to him. He rolled over on his side and half-propped himself off the floor using his shoulder when his elbow failed to act. His legs wouldn’t hold his weight just yet but his toes and knees could move under their own power. The re-awakening process was endless and endlessly slow; he fought away his own rising panic by devoting himself entirely to rehabilitating his body.

“Gahh dammut, Evey!” Rage and fear for her coupled in his mind with maddening ferocity as he struggled to his feet lugging himself upwards using table and chair legs for support. Finally on his feet, bracing himself with the tabletop, he allowed himself a moment of pure panic. 

You stupid girl! What have you done?! Why would you do this to yourself, to ME?!! This night is MY DESTINY. Why would you try to take that from me? How long have I been out – where would she go? THINK, dammit! The train, my god, the train – does she know about it? If Parliament isn’t destroyed…. 20 years thrown away! What the hell time is it?!

His vision scanned the Gallery for a visible timepiece. The grandfather clock near the piano said 7:15, but was it day or night? And, which day or night was it? It was surely no longer the Fifth, as he had arrived in the Gallery later than that when he had accepted the glass of wine from Evey. He was nearly doubled over by a wave of nausea that was either a side effect of the paralytic agent that she had slipped him or the overwhelming sensation of monumental failure. He had to get to the roof. 

V stumbled to the lift and tried not to count the seconds it took to get him where he needed to be. He ripped open the lift gates at the roof and pushed through the doors with the remnants of his returning strength as he erupted onto a twilight skyline. 7 o’clock at night, he shivered in sudden awe: he had been unconscious for at least a whole day! Reflexively he looked in the direction of Parliament and saw the horizon still thick with orange-brown clouds highlighted at random intervals with red and blue flashes and the wandering paths of klieg lights. No recognizable shapes could be seen from this distance but the musty smell of wet charcoal and burnt wood lingering in the air answered his question for him. She did it: she destroyed Parliament. A form of tension released itself into the night and he had to hold onto the roof’s edge while he shook uncontrollably. V’s body collected 20 years of rage, control, fear, and meticulous, murderous detail into one horrific howl that tore through every fiber of him like a thousand little arrows. The unearthly noise reverberated off of the surrounding buildings and probably echoed for blocks in every direction. Perhaps those out testing their new-found freedom on the formerly forbidden evening streets of London looked upwards at hearing this sound and questioned whether they had been liberated after all, or whether a new form of suffering had descended upon them. Surely you couldn’t be free and make a sound like that. 

V slumped to his knees wrung powerless once again. He rested his forehead against the roofline’s wet border and just breathed. Sense started to return to him in sparks and flashes outlined against his closed eyelids. A question slowly bubbled its way to the surface, and soon, it was the only thing that he could think of: if Evey completed his vendetta, where was she?  
\-------------------------------------

V tore through the lift gates into the Gallery with a renewed sense of purpose trilling throughout his body. It was a phantom purpose but it served his current situation well enough. His vendetta had been fulfilled and he was supposed to be dead; his body knew this and could not face answering the question of what to do with a life filled with endless, aimless uncertainty. Instead of considering the morass of what came next, the man and the body who had an answer or a plan for just about everything substituted his need to find Evey into his now vacant vendetta slot. Maybe she would hold the answer, or maybe it would just come to him as he went along – a prospect with which he was very uncomfortable. 

Masked, cloaked and armed he traced his path to the abandoned tube station where he was to meet Creedy and his goons. His way was impassibly blocked by collapsed bulkheads, rebar, concrete and steel. The pungent aroma of copper, cordite, and burnt materials told the rest of the story: someone found the C4 charges and had set them off during or after a firefight. If Evey were amongst the dead, he’d never find her. His diaphragm gave a sick twist again and he momentarily lost the ability to breathe: Evey gone – living life alone – he couldn’t bear the thought. He had an insane impulse to start digging through the rubble with his bare hands to find her: what would be the point in that masochism? Why ceaselessly beat yourself against this Hadrian’s Wall of inevitability? Stop this; take a deep breath and face the truth. 

No. No, there are still places that I can look for her: Victoria station, her apartment. Hope springs eternal.

He turned and ran harder and faster than he ever had before. His body said that they were running to Victoria station, but something small and persistent said that he was just running. He rounded the corner to the platform’s entrance and felt it almost before his eyes saw it: a crumpled pool of black lay at the furthest end of the station near the tunnel opening. As he approached it, running carelessly, his foot slipped in what he thought was cloak fabric but was in actuality a blood pool. His foot shot out from under him as he crashed to his knees and slid ungraciously through the congealed, blackened blood and thudded softly into a body. 

Oh, No.

He carefully gripped the tiny figure on both sides and turned it so that it was facing upwards. Guy Fawkes smiled back at him, blood streaking his rosy cheeks and chin, blood matting his dark hair. Blood EVERYWHERE. 

No, No, No.

His hands shook as he reached forward and awkwardly untied the mask while still cradling the body – don’t let it touch the blood again, rescue it from the stagnant pool. Evey’s ashen face stared back at him; her eyes open, wide and sightless. Blood spatter stained her throat where the mask or fabric hadn’t covered her flesh. He tore off his glove and reached her throat for a pulse: she was cold to the touch but yielding – the blood spatter didn’t smudge under his touch. Rigor mortis had come and gone; she had been dead a long time. 

It’s hard to say if what happened next actually made a physical sound or not, but V heard and felt a tremendous cracking noise. Perhaps it was like the cracking of the hinges on Pandora’s box, or the snapping of the crisp apple skin under Adam’s teeth in the garden in those first days. It was the sound made when what was and what is parts company forever. The crack signals the appearance of a chasm so deep and so wide that there is no circumventing it in order to return from whence you came. V had always thought that the true source of his strength came from is lack of concern at losing anything – he had nothing left that he thought that he would miss, not even his life. Now he understood that you always had things worth losing, but sometimes you didn’t realize what they were until they were already gone.

He clutched Evey’s grey body fiercely into his as he rocked gently back and forth in the pool of her blood. The only sound to be heard was the creaking of his leather boots as he moved. Long after he lost feeling in his legs, he leaned her back, replaced her mask, rose with her draped in his arms and walked out of the station.  
\---------------------------------------

V stared down at the smaller, bloodier version of himself laid out on the drain table that he had brought out from his workshop. To his right were a large bowl of water, wash linens, metal tweezers, scalpels, and a change of clothes. For what he was about to do he had removed only his hat, cloak and gloves; the mask remained. The mask was the final, crazy, lug nut that was holding his fractured self within the moment instead of out roaming the streets murdering any that he met while screaming balefully. He was going to strip her, remove the bullets, clean her, dress her and burn her. Then, he was going to come back to the Gallery, turn out the lights and lay down – for good. To sleep, perchance to dream. Perchance to die, hopefully die, rot and be forgotten as the earth and his home swallowed him. 

He raised the scalpel in his hand. So much blood. His clothes were stiff with it also, but he was only thinking of Evey now. He counted 11 bullet holes in her torso, only 3 of which hadn’t met with a vital organ. Even so, it probably took her ages to die. His hand began to shake. As she slowly lost energy, motor control, body heat and consciousness, did she stare into the dark abyss and wonder why he hadn’t come for her? The scalpel clattered to the floor. He grabbed the edges of the table in hopes that they would keep him standing. His body convulsed as he struggled to keep what was coming out inside. He was sleeping on the floor of his kitchen while the love of his life was bleeding to death on a deserted platform. Did she question his love for her in the last moments when her hoped ebbed? The sob came out of him like he had never cried before and didn’t understand what to do with it. Once started, the sobs had a will of their own and they came out of him in rapid, unmeasured bursts like machine gun fire. 

“I did know.” The voice was soft against his sobs.

Inwardly terrorized by his plight, the shock of a voice not his own spurred him to outward terror. Before he could think, he held one of his knives and thrust it out menacingly against the darkness. The interior of his mask was so hot and slick with tears that his vision blurred. He ripped the mask from his face to reveal a visage more contorted and ugly with emotion than the scars had even made it. He strafed the dark with his sight and his knife finding nothing. 

“God dammit, V!” He lowered the knife and rubbed at his eyes with his free hand. “Stupid, fucking GIRL!” he raged.

“I don’t think that’s anyway to talk about the one that you love, V! Get a grip on yourself!” The voice wasn’t in his head. It ECHOED. He saw her shadow as she stepped forward. He felt her footfalls.

Knife in hand, he blinked in disbelief as Evey Hammond stood 3 feet in front of him. He saw her chest rise and fall with breath, he smelled her scent, he saw her twitch and bite her lip slightly, which she did when she was nervous around him. His head shot around to look at the figure on the drain table. The black-clad, masked figure was still there, bloodied and irreparably broken. 

Evey held out her hand to him. He recoiled. “What fresh hell is this!” he barked at her.

Evey rolled her eyes with impatience. “Enough with the drama already…”

She reached out and grabbed his hand with the knife and used it to slice open the palm of her outstretched hand. He hissed as her felt her touch and was rendered speechless by the bead of blood that it produced. His thumb rubbed across it and the bead smeared. He also felt her warm hand beneath it. He shook his head.

“Explain this.” His eyes were squeezed shut as if he was a child trying to retain a dream. “I don’t believe in ghosts.” He was still holding onto her hand.

“That’s a relief,” she said with a smile hidden in her voice. “As this is not a supernatural visitation so much as it is a psychological one.” His eyes snapped open. She stood before him warm and bleeding but she bore no scars and her hair trailed over her shoulders in long molten curls. 

“You’re saying that I’m mad…” He waited for her to finish the sentence.

“…As a March hare, my love. A tribute to lunacy, really. Crazy in a most creative and touching way. I am honored.” She bowed theatrically.

“So, you’re really dead?” He couldn’t understand how she could be so solid and be a hallucination. 

“V,” she sighed and said the next sentence very carefully. “I’ve been dead for 8 months.”

He stared at her and then stared back at the body on the table. When his eyes returned to hers they were wide and empty. She was going to have to do the heavy lifting in this conversation. Especially if she wanted to save his mind.

“I, umm that is – Evey, never returned from Gordon’s house.” She waited a moment while the statement settled in. When V’s expression didn’t change, she continued. “When the Fingermen raided Gordon’s home, you didn’t get to her first. Gordon and Evey were black bagged. When they found Gordon’s Koran and his stash of homoerotic photography, they executed him but they needed Evey alive because she was their only link to you. They set about interrogating her until she revealed your whereabouts.”

“Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?” Good, he had recovered his powers of speech.

“I’m getting to that. During her interrogation, one of the Fingermen got a bit…exuberant. She denied knowing your location because she truly didn’t know it, but after 12 hours, her captors didn’t care. One of them punched her so hard that she slammed her head off a cell wall. Thinking her merely unconscious, they left her there while her brain bled out.” 

Here Evey paused a bit. She seemed to be… mourning herself as if missing a cherished friend. V’s anxiety level had peaked and he found this whole performance to be extremely disturbing. He had skirted insanity for most of his life but had managed to balance his skewed world vision with his surroundings. This was different, however – he had always known before whenever he was approaching the outer edge of sense. How could he be imagining this person and not be aware of the deception? He looked into her face realizing the irony of wanting to be comforted by the same person who was the agent of his destruction. 

Evey raised her eyes to look at him again. “When you discovered her death at their hands, your vengeance was horrifying,” she said quietly. “You butchered the entire Fingermen unit responsible, and gave special attention to the man who had hit her. In the end, I’m sure that he prayed to die as much as you did - perhaps as much as you do right now.”

“Fiction!” he growled. “I caught you. I broke you in a prison of my making. I freed you. I have hated and feared and loved you. I have LOVED you! I have held you in my arms. I have heard your screams and I have tasted your tears. How do you explain that?” He was shaking with rage but his voice barely registered above a whisper. “Who are you?” 

“I am you, V.” She allowed another pause to hang between them before she continued. “It’s not a metaphor: you had some kind of “break” when Evey died, and in your struggle to cope with the loss of the only meaningful human contact that you’ve had in 20 years, I came into being. I am Evey as you hoped that she would be, shaped by your experiences.”

“If you think about it for a moment, it makes a strange kind of sense.” Evey said quietly. “Before I ran away I was a selfish, frightened child. But after you “saved” me I became powerful, resilient, and possessed of an understanding born of situations that so greatly mirrored your own. I became your pupil, your lover, your ally – the perfect partner. I was the embodiment of everything that you had lost, offering it back to you as I accepted and loved you for who you were. It wasn’t just a symbiotic relationship; it was attempt to make you whole again. Your vendetta was slowly forcing you to abandon your humanity. I am that part of you which refuses to be pushed aside in the name of revenge.” 

He was shaking his head. “You drugged me! I’ve been unconscious for a day, and in that time men have been killed, intricate plans were set into motion, someone blew up Parliament! If you are nothing more than an incredibly convincing hallucination, then who did all of that?” 

“You did.”

V snorted indignantly.

“Well, I guess I did, but since I am you, it’s still the same thing, isn’t it? This is where it gets difficult, I’m afraid.” She bit her lip once again. 

“It’s no secret that trauma creates personality changes.” She started pacing as she talked, moving her hands as she explained her point – very much as he would. “When an event is too psychologically damaging, bizarre permutations of mental protection occur such as blackouts, temporary amnesia, and split personality disorder until the mind is able to absorb the content of the trauma – if ever.” Here Evey’s manner softened. She stepped tentatively towards V. 

“Your experiences at Larkhill laid the groundwork for such a psychological break to occur, but the violent loss of a friend became the tipping point upon which it actually manifested itself.” V could almost reach out and grab her. He profoundly wanted her to stop talking and just lose himself in her arms – just continue denying everything – but he was strangely riveted by her voice. He was the calm, still center of a person who had been shocked into submission.

“Human nature is full of dichotomies: good and evil, right and wrong, man and beast – and our personalities are made up of the bridges that we build between these extremes within. You were reduced to something sub-human during your imprisonment, and once freed, you continued along that tangent by severing your humanity from the idea that you wanted to become.” She took another step forward.

“But you cannot deny that you are a man, and meeting Evey resurrected that connection in you. Alas, with humanity came emotion, frailty, and pain – 20 years’ worth, in fact. It wasn’t useful to you and yet you were drawn to the opposite of your cold, unflinching purpose. You desired to be whole again.” Evey took one last step forward.

“She offered you that most human of ideas: hope. Hope is messy and complicated, and it made you question your purpose. It invited doubt and confusion, and forced you to take a broader view of your plans. Then, your hope was extinguished. Room Five came crashing down around you again, and in order to survive, you resurrected your hope: you brought Evey – me – back to you.” She gently laid her palm against V’s chest. He could feel the warmth and pressure against him. He looked directly into her eyes searching for a hint of his own delusion. Their deep brown pools were as convincing to him as they had ever been. Christ, he really was bonkers!

“As long as I existed, you could sustain both your vendetta and your humanity: the animal and the diffident gentleman. A semblance of the whole could be maintained.”

Evey paused. It was a lot to absorb and chances were good that V wouldn’t accept it. Self-realization is tough for the well adjusted to handle, let alone a torture victim who had just been told that he had spent the last 8 months talking to his imaginary friend. V’s hands closed over Evey’s palm and clutched that one part of her close to him. He stood staring at their hands for a long time. Finally, and with regret, he dropped her hand and took a step back.

“I have a question.” He said.

“Chances are you already know the answer…but go ahead and ask.”

“If you were what I needed to keep body and soul together, then why reveal any of this at all?” He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. “I was clearly convinced. You kept me sane and my goal was about to be achieved. Why not let it all go forward as I had planned?”

“Why not let you die?” Here Evey crossed her hands behind her. “Because it was selfish, V.” They stood across from each other – arms folded, legs apart – the mirror images of a single determination.

“Your vendetta never looked beyond the actions of the Fifth. With the leaders dead and Norsefire in shambles, you have created opportunity as well as a tremendous atmosphere for future horrors. Nature abhors a vacuum, V, and in the absence of a stabilizing figure, worse elements could usurp power and nullify everything that you sought to destroy. You have broken the machine but a few machinists still remain. Did you really think that the country wouldn’t continue to need you?”

Evey cocked her head slightly as V would during one of his lectures. It was strange to see the gesture reflected back to him. “And you think that England has need of a leader who talks to himself and invents people?” V wondered why sarcasm directed at his imaginary friend didn’t insult him by association.

“Who better to fight true believers than someone who so fervently believes the opposite that he would sacrifice his life and his sanity in order to achieve his goals?” Evey arched an eyebrow. “The irony is that your split personality makes you the perfect candidate to be both an anarchist AND a rallying political figure. It seems that the universe has a sense of humor.” A corner of her mouth crinkled upwards to match her eyebrow.

“But surely you could’ve just left me to awaken today alone. You could have simply disappeared. Why did it have to…” 

“Why did it have to be so painful?”

He nodded.

“I needed you to live. I needed to convince you of the reasons why. Had I maintained the illusion of being the real Evey, you would never have forgiven me for undermining you. If I disappeared, you would have driven yourself mad over that and watched London burn. I needed to shock your system into attention. And… I had to do it for me.” Evey looked away in embarrassment.

It was V’s turn to cock his head. “Why?”

“Because… I… I want to live too.” Evey continued contemplating her shoes.

“And if I die, you die.” 

Evey nodded and then looked directly at him.

“I am part of you, it’s true. But as Evey, I was also an individual!” Her eyes widened with excitement. “I had freedom, and opinions, and motivations that seemed to spring from me alone! I enjoyed being your foil. I enjoyed being your sounding board. And I reveled at the conflict between us. It made me feel… gloriously alive!” She clutched handfuls of his shirtfront in her fists. “Tell me that you haven’t felt more ALIVE in this past year than in the previous 20!” 

V looked down at her hands and wrapped hers in his own.

“Yes, I did feel alive.” he whispered.

He freed himself from her grasp and moved to the drain table. Reverently he lifted the mask off of the body. Nothing lay beneath it but the table. He touched the figure’s bloody clothes and the form beneath them collapsed. He stood still for a long while.

“It’s only an illusion if you allow it to be.” Evey responded to his unspoken question. “Reality is overrated, V. If you can use a lie to reveal the truth, why not use an illusion to help fix your reality?”

V moved away from the table and slid down the side of a wall, coming to rest with his arms braced across his kneecaps. He softly knocked the back of his head into the wall three times. Evey casually followed him and came to rest beside him, her shoulder and hip touching his. V could feel a solid warmth radiating from her.

“How can you feel so… real?”

“Well, I don’t really understand any more about this than you do.” She let out an ironic chuckle. “But, I think, that if the mind wants something badly enough, the body will make it real.” She grabbed one of his hands and rubbed the scarred knuckles lightly with her thumb. “So, I’m real to you, but to anyone else it would appear that your cheese has slid off your cracker a bit.” She giggled and pushed into his shoulder lightly. In turn, he found himself laughing too – nothing left for it but laughter.

They remained that way together, leaning against each other and the Gallery wall, for a long time. Eventually he squeezed her hand and stood up walking to his study alone. 

“What now?” Evey called out to him.

He turned to face her, his back straight, his shoulders square; order restored once again. 

“I don’t know. I have to formulate a suitable plan. ‘We’ have a lot of work to do.”


End file.
